Mark Urban

Mark Lee Urban (born 26 January 1961) is a British journalist, historian, and broadcaster. He is a writer and commentator for The Sunday Times, specialising in defence and foreign affairs. Until May 2024 he was Diplomatic Editor and occasional presenter for BBC Two's Newsnight.

Education and early career Urban, whose father Garri came from Poland, is the younger brother of film and television director Stuart Urban. He grew up in Wimbledon, south London.

Urban attended the London School of Economics, prior to which he served in the Royal Tank Regiment as an officer holding a Short Service Limited Commission lasting 1 year.

Correspondent career

Urban joined the BBC in 1983 as an assistant producer, working on several BBC news programmes. From 1986 to 1990 he was the defence correspondent of The Independent, before rejoining the BBC as a general reporter on Newsnight. From 1993 to 1994 he was Middle East correspondent for BBC News, before becoming Newsnights diplomatic editor, a role he has held since 1995. In his years on Newsnight, he has reported on the Gulf War, the Bosnian War, War in Kosovo, the War in Afghanistan and War in Iraq. After the 2018 Amesbury poisonings Urban reported that he had been working with Sergei Skripal up to a year before the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury.

Military historian In 1992, Urban published Big Boys' Rules: The SAS and the secret struggle against the IRA on killings by British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary undercover units in Northern Ireland between 1976 and 1987. The book, which was subject to censorship by the D-Notice Committee, was described by John Stalker as "deep and meticulous delving into a secret war".

Books Soviet Land Power (1985) War in Afghanistan (1987) Big Boys' Rules: The SAS and the secret struggle against the IRA (1992) UK Eyes Alpha: Inside British Intelligence (1996) The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes: The Story of George Scovell (2001) Rifles: Six Years with Wellington's Legendary Sharpshooters (2003) Generals: Ten British Commanders Who Shaped the World (2005) Fusiliers: Eight Years with the Redcoats in America (2007) Task Force Black: The Explosive True Story of the Secret Special Forces War in Iraq (2011) The Tank War: The British Band of Brothers – One Tank Regiment's World War II (2014) The Edge: Is The Military Dominance Of The West Coming To An End? (2015) The Skripal Files: The Life and Near Death of a Russian Spy (2018) Tank: The 10 War Machines That Changed the World and the Remarkable Men Behind Them (2025)